This application relates in general to light emitting polymer displays, and in specific to light emitting polymers used as wearable displays.
Prior art attempts at providing surface areas with patterns, decorations, colors, advertisements, information, and the like onto all manner of surfaces have been generally confined to printing (paint, transfer process, etc.) or integration (weaving and/or coloring raw batches of composite materials, etc.). In accordance with these methodologies, the prior art teaches the marking, coloring, or printing of walls, fabrics, plastics, metals, infrastructures, and other manners of manufactured items. However, all of the above prior art methodologies are subject to the same inflexibility. Specifically, once a surface of any one of the multitude of disparate objects is prepared with colors, patterns, or markings, any changes required thereon may range from the impossible (such as in the case of fabrics, where color is dyed on or woven in), to the time consuming (such as repainting walls, metals, or transportation infrastructures, such as roadway markings, etc.)
Accordingly, the prior art technology relating to the field of surface area marking has certain drawbacks. Recent attempts to overcome the particular disadvantages of the prior art, such as the ones described above, include a wide range of solutions, ranging from the use of light emitting diode (LED) screens on changeable surfaces (e.g., highway signs reflecting the updating of highway information) to items such as reversible jackets or velcro patches, which are offered as a remedy to the inflexibility of the coloring or marking of textiles or fabric. Nevertheless, such solutions provide at best only moderate flexibility with respect to the ability to change the surface colorings or markings, particularly with respect to non-paintable, flexible surfaces such as fabric. Moreover, the prior art teachings have yet to offer a solution which is widely applicable to all manner of surface changeability, including flexible surfaces like fabric.
Therefore, there is a need in the art of surface area marking for a system that permits easy changeability of surface coloration or marking across the wide range of materials having markable surfaces. Furthermore, there is a particular need for such a solution to apply to surfaces which are flexible and not easily changeable, such as fabric.
These and other objects, features and technical advantages are achieved by a system and method by which light emitting polymers (LEPs) are applied to a variety of surfaces, both flexible and inflexible, in order to provide versatile, easily changeable surface markings and/or coloration. A system and method are disclosed which further provide for displaying both still and moving images (e.g., movies) on such surface. Additionally, other information received/generated by an application may be displayed on such surface. For example, a received e-mail or a desired map generated by a mapping application may be displayed on the surface. In a most preferred embodiment, the surface on which the LEPs are utilized to display a desired image/color/information is a fabric surface. For instance, in a most preferred embodiment, LEPs are implemented within an article of clothing that a user may wear.
Specifically, LEPs are a class of polymers which exhibit electrical properties beyond the purely insulating characteristics of simple plastics and provide a light weight combined with physical strength, yet are able to offer structural flexibility in the areas of application/manufacture, as well as versatility in usage thereafter. More specifically, LEPs are conjugated polymers which may be molded, extruded woven, deposited (e.g., through electrochemical or spin coating means) or even may be printed on a surface, all while providing metallic and semiconductor characteristics. These characteristics stem from the very structure of the class of polymers which possess a delocalized pi-electron system along the polymer backbone such that the delocalized pi-electron system. This confers semiconducting properties to the polymer and gives it the ability to support positive and negative charge carriers. It is the nature of the characteristics described as such which offer materials fashioned thereof with many classical transistor-like properties.
Accordingly, LEPs are generally suitable to application of a variety of surface areas in neo-transistor structural order. Application in certain structural order may be fashioned even on difficult surfaces, such as fabrics, which ideally would have flexible substrate surfaces, and are then spun coated from LEP material, into distinct layers. In a preferred embodiment, the composition of these layers would ideally be doped semiconducting conjugated polymers such as polyaniline and polypyrrole which lead to the presence of states in the band gap, and at sufficient dopant concentrations, permit the band gap to virtually disappear, thereby allowing the polymer to act as a metal with high conductivity. Although, any suitable composition now known or later developed may be implemented, and any such implementation is intended to be within the scope of the present invention. For instance, any suitable composition for a sufficiently flexible LEP display that may be implemented with fabric, such as an article of clothing, is intended to be within the scope of the present invention.
By providing material composed of the LEP elements of a preferred embodiment, versatile, flexible fabrics are provided which would permit a user to change the color, pattern, or design of a garment, for example, constructed of such fabric. For instance, the mere touch of a control button may dictate transmission of coloration or markings in say, an array of transition-like modules, which, according to embedded code (as known in the art of video display coding) may implement, pixel by pixel, the resulting appearance throughout the specified areas in a garment. Structured as such, a preferred embodiment of the present invention contemplates provision of a given wearer of a LEP garment the ability to change the appearance of an article of clothing, such as a jacket. For example, in a preferred embodiment, a user may change a jacket from bearing the design of the New York Yankees to that of the logo of the New York Giants, or alternatively, to change the color, text, or other pattern on any given garment. Furthermore, in a preferred embodiment, the display on a garment need not be still images. For example, movies, videos, cartoons, xe2x80x9cscreen savers,xe2x80x9d or any other type of moving images may be displayed on the fabric.
Furthermore, provision of LEPs in such a manner extends well beyond garments. As examples, the contemplated provision of flexibly-backed LEP elements also provides for application to walls, signs, carpets, road surfaces, automobile surfaces (interior and/or exterior), airplane surfaces (interior and/or exterior), safety devices, message boards, etcetera. Of course, it will be recognized that flexibly-backed LEPs as disclosed herein may be utilized in an unlimited number of applications, and the scope of the present invention is intended to encompass all such applications. Such surfaces may simply be augmented by the covering of desired surfaces with the described flexibly-backed LEP material or may even be originally provided with the above-described LEP elements spin coated or otherwise deposited on a given manufactured surface area. For example, a surface may be implemented as a movie screen to display a movie, as opposed to a movie projector being utilized to project a movie onto the display surface. Thus, the requirement of expensive movie projector equipment for displaying movies may be eliminated.
Accordingly, it is a technical advantage of the present invention to provide versatility and ease of LEPs for changing surface coloration and marking. It is a further technical advantage of the present invention to apply the advantages of LEPs to problematic surfaces such as fabric, such that a user would be able to increase the versatility and appearance of any given fabric, such as a garment.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.